Atlanta Braves: Diving into the first half stats, looking for ways to improve
Pitching strengths and weaknesses
We’ll look at the pitching staff as a whole and then break it down between starters and relievers.
The Atlanta Braves rank 11th in baseball with an ERA of 4.18, but are 18th with a WHIP of 1.37. They are 17th in BAA at .253 and are 15th in strikeouts.
It gets worse when you look at just the starters where the Atlanta Braves rank 17th in ERA at 4.56 and 19th in WHIP at 1.38. Opponents hit .262 against Braves starters.
Braves starters also issued the sixth most walks in all of baseball in the first half, while finishing 19th in strikeouts.
The bullpen finished the first half with the third best ERA in all of baseball at 3.64, but they’re 12th ranked WHIP of 1.35 probably tells you they got a little lucky.
But the bullpen did rank ninth in K/9 at 9.50, and they were eighth in BAA at .239.
They also struggled with walks issuing the ninth most walks as a bullpen.
Going back to the team stats, the Atlanta Braves ranked 19th in baseball in K/9 at 8.60 and had the seventh worst BB/9 at 3.63. The lack of strikeouts and high number of walks issued is the most glaring weakness of the Braves pitching staff.
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That’s something that got significantly better in June, which led to their hot streak. They will need to continue to improve on that in the second half and into the postseason (if they make it) in order for them to succeed.
The pitching staff also had the 13th highest BABIP at .298, so hopefully that means there will be a little regression there in the second half. The starters BABIP was even higher at .304.
Of course, I think a lot of that has to do with the Braves defensive positioning, which I’m not a huge fan of.
Atlanta Braves pitchers do a great job of keeping the ball on the ground with a ground ball percentage of 45.3, but they need to do a better job of having their defenders in spots to make plays.
Too many of those groundballs are finding holes right now.
I really think if our pitchers can continue to cut down on the walks and we improve our defensive alignments, we’ll see our pitching numbers skyrocket in the second half.
Next. Pitching help from NL East. dark
And if that happens, watch out. The Atlanta Braves will continue to steamroll the competition in the second half on their way to another division title.